Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, with LA Olympic Bid Committee president Casey Wasserman, announces Los Angeles has been named to host the 2028 Olympics instead of the 2024 Games during a press conference at StubHub Center in Carson on July 31. (Leo Jarzomb/Staff Photographer)

LOS ANGELES >> A Los Angeles Olympic bid that has often been described by its organizers and supporters in metaphoric terms is a single vote next month away from crossing the finish line.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Friday morning to authorize Mayor Eric Garcetti to sign a Host City Contract with the International Olympic Committee in which the city agrees to host the 2028 Olympic Games and guarantees it will cover any potential financial shortfall from those games, clearing the last significant domestic obstacle from the city’s path to hosting a third Olympics.

The council also approved a memorandum of understanding between the city, local organizing committee Los Angeles 2028 and the U.S. Olympic Committee that gives the council a role in the planning of the 2028 Games, and the city protection against an unexpected financial deficit. The approvals set up what is expected to be a unanimous vote by the IOC on Sept. 13 in Lima, Peru, to award the 2028 Games to Los Angeles.“Everybody has had a different metaphor, and we’ve even changed them,” Garcetti said of the city’s bid. “I thought this was going to be a marathon. But this has been the hurdles, and I think we just went over the last one, and we’re going into Lima, and on Sept. 13, we’re going to make official the Olympics are coming back to the City of Angels.”

All 95 IOC members have assured Los Angeles officials that the organization will unanimously approve Los Angeles as the 2028 host and award Paris the 2024 Games in a Sept. 13 vote, Garcetti and LA 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman said. The Lima vote will complete a 21/2 year quest in which Los Angeles was originally snubbed by the USOC in favor of an ill-fated Boston bid. L.A. re-emerged in a five-city field before a decision by the IOC to award two games in the same year for the first time in nearly a century opened the door for Los Angeles to become only the third city to hold three Olympics.

“We’re nearly across the finish line,” Wasserman said.

But what was expected to be a final victory lap around City Hall on Friday was upstaged by the first significant public protest against the Los Angeles bid.

The vote, which also approved a three-party agreement between LA 2028, Paris 2024 and the IOC, came at the end of two whirlwind weeks in which LA 2028 came to terms with the IOC on a record-setting Host City Contract. Organizing committee and city officials also had to acknowledge that the Olympic agreements were being approved with LA 2028’s budget not expected to be finalized until early next year and a validation of that budget by the accounting firm KPMG perhaps 18 months away. The IOC has set an Aug. 18 deadline for Los Angeles to submit bid-related documents.

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Olympic historians, economists, members of previous U.S. Olympic bids and sport business analysts in recent weeks have said that while the Los Angeles bid is the strongest in Olympic history, the absence of a validated budget and the additional four years to the normal seven years between the IOC selecting host cities and the actual games add further uncertainty to an endeavor that has historically resulted in financial catastrophe.

LA 2028 and city officials countered that the 2028 bid is essentially the same as plans for privately funded 2024 Games that came with a balanced $5.3 billion budget, relied on existing venues and previously approved infrastructure and was vetted by city officials. With the wealth of existing Olympic-caliber facilities in the region and the availability of UCLA as the Olympic Village, LA 2028 can avoid the construction and financing costs and overruns that have doomed many recent Olympic Games.

“When you’re not changing a single venue or single deliverable, what is changing in the budget?” Wasserman said.

But local community activists and opposition groups, most notably NOlympics LA, in recent months have joined the games insiders in expressing concerns about the 2028 plans, saying the games would exacerbate Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis, raise housing prices and create concerns about immigration, police abuse and environmental issues.

LA 2028 officials have attended more than 30 public meetings over the past two years, including a meeting in each of the council districts. A Loyola Marymount poll conducted last month found that 83 percent of its respondents supported the 2028 bid, and the public meetings attended by LA 2028 officials were marked by a notable lack of significant public pushback.

That all changed Friday morning, first during a meeting of the City Council’s subcommittee on the Olympic bid and then during the meeting before the full council that followed.

NOlympics LA held up signs saying “Homes Not Games” and “Stop Playing Games” and frequently booed, hissed or shouted at council members and Wasserman. At one point things grew so heated during the subcommittee meeting that Councilman Joe Buscaino rose from his seat to shout down a member of NOlympics LA in the audience.

“I’m getting tired of people standing up and questioning our decision-making,” Buscaino shouted.

“I was completely disappointed with how Joe Buscaino conducted himself today,” NOlympics LA spokesman Jonny Coleman said. “His belligerence is evidence that he should not serve in any sort of public office, anywhere.”

Later the group drowned out the roll call for the 12-0 vote with chants of “Let us speak! Let us speak!” and “Shame! Shame!”

A group of a dozen or so protesters also disrupted a post-vote news conference on City Hall’s steps with chants of “Halt the Games! Halt the Games!” that were so loud that Wasserman’s speech was barely audible.

“Today I watched 12 city council members and our mayor dig a grave for themselves,” Coleman said.

“We saw the 2028 press conference set up at 7 a.m., so we knew the council had no intention of listening to the public and having that inform their vote. Their vote had been mailed in months ago. They tried to curtail democracy at every possible moment during the proceedings today, in addition to letting pro-Olympics speakers speak well over 30 seconds and a minute over the allotted time.

“We appreciate that council pretended to hear our concerns, which is better than ignoring us and pretending these problems don’t exist, which was their tack up until recently.”

A LA 2028 official said the group offered to meet with NOlympics LA members in May, but the group declined the invitation.

Garcetti said he is confident the city can host transformative games and address issues such as homelessness and immigration. Because of its use of existing facilities, the LA Games will largely avoid the displacement issues that have plagued several recent games, LA 2028 and city officials said.

“There’s always a percentage who doesn’t (support the games) and in a big city that can add up to a million people and they can seem loud, but if you listen to the choir of the support behind this we all know nothing gets an 83 percent vote,” said Garcetti, referring to the Loyola Marymount poll as NOlympics LA protesters continued to shout. “But the Olympics do because people realize this is a decade to not only hold an Olympic Games better than any we’ve ever seen but organize a city to make sure we have the housing that we need because we won’t displace anybody. To make sure people will come with public transportation and not be stuck in traffic. To make sure young people will grow up and not have to worry about what their parents earn.

“I think people have legitimate concerns. I share those same concerns about housing the homeless, about displacing people, which we’re not going to do because we’re not building anything where there’s housing, of the way we need to make sure we’re making investments in our transportation, that we’re not distracted. We have more pressing concerns today in Los Angeles than what’s going to happen in 2028. But we see the connectivity to 2028.”

Opponents of the bid were particularly upset with Council President Herb Wesson’s decision not to hold a pubic comment during the regular council meeting, a move opponents said violated the Brown Act for public meetings.

Wesson did hold public comment period during the earlier subcommittee meeting.

“We’re very concerned about Herb Wesson not allowing public comment in front of full council,” Coleman said. “One of the newly elected council members was not on council when the 2024 bid came through City Council, so she was never involved in the old part of the process. There were many procedural irregularities — whether they are against the law or not is irrelevant — they weren’t trying to let the public be heard at general council. And they’re going to regret that down the line.”

Said Wesson, “When you have public comment during the (sub-)committee it satisfies the Brown Act. You know me better to know I would not do that.”

While acknowledging the uncertainty that comes with hosting games still 11 years away, city officials said the similarities between the 2028 bid and the previously vetted 2024 plan, and the greater safeguards for the city in the renegotiated MOU, offset potential financial risks.

“There have been some thoughts that this is being rushed, but this actually started two years ago,” said Sharon Tso, the city’s chief legislative analyst.

By signing off on the Host City Contract and other bid documents, the council agrees to two guarantees: the “city is prepared to sign the HCC (Host City Contract) without reserve or amendment” and “will guarantee that it will cover any potential financial shortfall of the OCOG, including potential refunds to the IOC of any advance payments to the (LA 2028) by the IOC in the event of a contingency such as a full or partial cancellation of the games,” according to report by Tso and the city administrative officer.

Under the terms of the Host City Contract, LA 2028 will receive at least $2 billion from the IOC, up from $1.7 billion had the city been awarded the 2024 Games, and also will receive the IOC’s 20 percent share of the 2028 Games surplus.